Bits of Questionable Interest

First of all, I have to remind myself to point out to those folks at home the strange German things that may be interesting. However, now that we have lived here for a year and a half (!), things no longer seem so strange... But one thing you have surely never seen, unless you've been in an old German governmental building (like the Volkshochschule or the Auslanderamt) are the crazy elevators. In these buildings, there are usually two elevators-- one up and one down. They are constantly moving, have no doors, and when you want to use the elevator, you just jump on! These things are a little bit scary to me (are they insane? jumping on an elevator??), so I always take the stairs. Another thing is the German habit of staring. A fellow Auslander pointed this out to me, and now I notice everyone doing it. It's not rude, they just don't have that aversion to looking people full in the face for several seconds at a time. I have to admit that I did notice this when we first moved here, but I thought it was just because I dress funny.

Tomorrow we are taking part in another Robert Burns Night, the fabulous Scottish holiday where everyone reads poems out loud and eats haggis. Oh, man, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. (really! Haggis is delicious! You should try it!!). Jeremy was trying to discourage me from reading anything this year-- ha, just try and stop me-- because last year I read both To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell and Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara. I did manage to restrain myself from also reading T.S Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Hee hee. Maybe this year I will do Shakespeare's Sonnet #147 ("for I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright/ who art black as hell, and dark as night" It was a great inspiration in my "Armida") or something funny by Roald Dahl.

And Karneval starts next week! Slightly less literary, but I think it will be fun. Ummm, I hope it will be fun. If you haven't read Jeremy's excellent, all-encompassing entry last year for this event, I will inform you that (to an American) Karneval is lot like Halloween but with more drinking and less scary pretense (although I think plenty of scary things happen, just not with witches and goblins). The thing lasts FIVE DAYS, and the whole city closes down. No school (not even my German class or ballet!), no work, and I fear the grocery stores are also closed most of the time. We are going to have some fun stocking up on food with the rest of the city before the whole thing kicks off next Thursday.